


Hanging Shadows

by SenTheSeventh



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 07:46:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4471103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenTheSeventh/pseuds/SenTheSeventh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Joseph's coughing gets worse in Ruvik's twisted dreamworld, Sebastian and Joseph are forced to come to words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hanging Shadows

    Sebastian has learned to ignore Joseph's fits of coughing. Caring about it is not doing any of them any good. Joseph is too proud to endure constant worry and Sebastian needs to focus on detecting the Haunted. Is it heartless? Fuck yeah. But Joseph is already desperate enough without being reminded of his possible hindrance status and survival is their main priority. They can't stop for rest or a little comfort cession: feeling better won't help them if Haunted manage to catch them unguarded.  
    That's the idea, at least, but then Joseph begins coughing during their exploration of a half-crumbled hallway and doesn't stop.  
    For a short, deluded moment, Sebastian thinks _must be the dust_. Then he hears the wet, spattering sounds of something liquid hitting the floor. He turns back, sees blood seeping between Joseph's fingers – from the hand his partner placed against his mouth to muffle his coughing.  
“Joseph!”  
    He clasps the other man's shoulder, an empty gesture that does nothing to alleviate the fear in Joseph's eyes. Humanity's oldest reflex, trying for physical contact during moment of distress. It's not always enough, though. It's never enough.  
     _Even alcohol wasn't enough_ , whisper a mean little voice in his head before he shakes it off.  
    Joseph attempts to speak, but his coughing doesn't let him – breaking his sentences in chopped-up pieces of syllables, and Sebastian'll be damned if he didn't hear a "I'm okay" in-between two pained, wheezing sounds. He'd almost laugh if panic wasn't creeping up on him.  
“No, you're fucking not. Lean on my shoulder. We're going to find a safe place. Are you alr- do you feel able to walk?”  
    Of course Joseph feels able to walk. He'd feel able to fly if it was asked of him. Joseph "prim and proper" Oda, the perfect detective, always up to the task at hand. Sebastian's teased him for it before – hated him for it before. _You know I didn’t report you because I was worried about your_ work _, Sebastian._  
    ... And daydreaming isn't going to lead him anywhere but in a world of trouble and Haunted jumping up on him. He shakes his head and continues to walk, Joseph a heavy weight against his shoulder. The air is cold, damp, pervaded with rottenness; his shirt sticks uncomfortably to his skin and the smell of mold and pain is thick against his tongue.  
    There're Haunted in the way, of course. There always are. Sebastian sticks to gun use to dispatch them, trying not to shake Joseph too much. To ignore the raspy sound of his coughing – less frequent now, but much heavier with pain and tiredness.  
    Fuck. It's going to be alright. They've been through worse before. Well, no, they haven't. But his partner's a though, resilient son of a bitch and he can't want to turn – it's going to be fine. Perfectly fine.  
    And maybe Sebastian will believe it, if he repeats it enough in his head.  
    It's Joseph who finds them a small, safe room. As safe as anything can be in this shithole of a place, anyway. Seems to have been a small study – now it's the only remaining part of a crumbled house, sitting on top of a pile of gigantic rubble like a wart on a bloated corpse. The inside is relatively clean, though. Someone lived here, someone meticulous, clean, who took care of ordering his books by size and always hung his pictures perfectly straight. Probably the guy who bled all over the parquet. At least, the corpse isn't here anymore, sparing them the smell. Sebastian helps Joseph lay on the couch.  
“Rest a bit, OK? It's going to be alright.”  
    Joseph doesn't answer, merely curls up into a ball and screws his eyes shut. If Sebastian wasn't an asshole, he'd go to his side and try to comfort him.  
     _If_. Words, huh? Too hard to use for Joseph and him. Maybe that's why they clicked together so well: both of them had the same aversion for talking. Things were painful enough: putting them into words would just give them more power.  
    And that's how Sebastian and Myra have ended up parting ways: because he hadn't got the balls to talk to her and had crawled into alcoholism and self-pity instead. She had not found in him the trustworthy confident he should have been and she had led her inquiry alone... with her disappearance and possible death – or worse – as a result.  
    Sebastian takes a deep breath. He turns from the windows and goes kneel at Joseph's side. His partner blinks at him, surprised. For a second, the lines that pain and fear have traced on his face disappear and Sebastian's throat tightens at the happiness he feels at the sight. How long has it been since he saw someone smiling? Far too long. The eerie nurse doesn't count.  
“Seb?”  
    Again with the “Seb”. His surname from before – before Joseph reported him, before the accident. Sebastian doesn't know what to answer; hell, he doesn't even know what he is doing, sitting at his partner's side and staring at his face like an ass. So, as always, he acts through instinct and gently squeezes Joseph's shoulder. It's ridiculous that a simple gesture of affection should suffice to make his partner smile: Oda is a no-nonsense kind of guy, serious, hardworking, not the sensitive kind. But he does. And Sebastian almost does, too.  
“What are you doing, Sebastian? You're not the type to babysit.”  
“Maybe I feel like it sometimes.”  
    Joseph chuckles tiredly, and coughs, and Sebastian reflexively grips his shoulder. It was a mistake to relax – he's caught much more off-guard by the return to reality.  
“Joseph! Are you okay?”  
“I'm fine...”  
    There's blood on Joseph's lips and fuck it if he looks anything like "fine" and Sebastian refrains the urge to shout or hit things. He grits his teeth instead, takes a deep breath, and stare into his partner's eyes.  
“You don't have to be fine, Joseph. I can take you being ill or terrified, OK? I'm a detective. My job is all about dealing with non-fine people.”  
    Joseph tenses up, uncertain, vulnerable. He has the same kind of expression that he had when they talked after his fucking suicide attempt. Sebastian doesn't know if he wants to hear what will follow.  
“But they were people that you didn't know.”  
    Trust his partner to find the words that hit right home. It'd be all too easy to give in to anger rather than pain, but he forces his jaw to unclench and try to stay calm. Joseph is sick, scared. He didn't mean to hurt Sebastian and even if he did, he's in no state to be held responsible for his action.  
“Yeah, I didn't know them, and – fuck, I reacted badly for Lily, but she was my daughter! I can take a friend being hurt. I've seen colleagues be wounded or die before. And I'll be much more worried if you try to hide things from me. You remember...”  
    He stops himself before he says _that you attacked me_ , but Joseph can guess the end of his sentence all by himself – he's not stupid. Guilt crunches his partner's face, dark eyes staring at the floor. _Fuck_.  
“I'm... sorry. You... If you want, we can split way. I'll get better soon – I'll manage alone.”  
 _Congrats, fucker. Because he didn't feel bad enough yet._  
“Stop talking about leaving!”  
    It came out louder than he expected, voice tense with fear and anger. Joseph stares at him, uncomprehending.  
“It's safer, Sebastian. You've got enough to worry about without expecting your partner to jump your throat at any moment.”  
“And I don't fucking care! A detective's partner isn't just another gun or another pair of hand, or did I miss the memo that we were expected to become fucking robots?”  
    Joseph stares at him for a moment and then he smiles, seconds before he bursts into laughter. Sebastian feels embarrassment creeping up his neck and ear – then anger, to chase the shame away, but them the other detective's hands grasp his shoulders. Five seconds of tensions – did Joseph turn again?  – but the laughter continue. Then Joseph's arms wraps around his shoulder, pulls him closer, and his partner's face is pressed against his chest by the time he realizes Joseph is crying.  
    Panic hits him. _What the fuck do I do?_ He'd pull away, but some shred of good sense tells him that Joseph'd totally closes up on him if he did that. Hesitantly, he clasp his partner's shoulders – fuck, that's ridiculous, what can he _do_? At a loss, he gently grabs Joseph, pull him against him like he'd have done to Lily, and the comparison and the whole situation are so fucked-up that he feels nausea ramps up in his throat. Joseph presses against him, whole body shaking with the violence of pent-up despair, and Sebastian feels so fucking powerless, he so fucking doesn't know what to do –  
    The kiss comes as much as a surprise to him than to Joseph. The other detective tenses up and Sebastian instantly recoils, but then Joseph's hand grasps his nape and pushes him into another kiss. His lips are as cold as his mouth is warm, almost burning in comparison, and he tastes like despair and fear and humanity.  
    How long has it been since Sebastian has touched someone else? Not to hit, not to push away, but to share and taste and enjoy? Their tongues caress each other, slide against each other, Joseph's skin slowly warming under his fingers. He's needed that. He's needed humanity.  
-  Seb…  
    The need in Joseph's voice makes him kiss him again and again, bruise his lips with avid kisses and half-bites. They can't – not here, not in the nightmarish, dangerous place they're in, what if a Haunted heard them, what if Joseph turned, what if – yet his hand is clasping his partner's thigh, sliding higher, feeling skin and flesh firm against his palm. Joseph makes small, trembling noises of pure need, griping his arms hard enough to hurt. Sebastian forbid himself to think and presses against the hardness he can feel between his partner's legs.  
    Joseph jerks against him, then a fumbling hand gropes at his chest and waist and finally slides between his belt and his skin. Pleasure shots up against his palate, exploding in his head like oxygen in a drowned man's lung.  
    This is not the time, not the place, yet he can't stop himself anymore than he'd be able to stop breathing. Joseph's rock hard against his hand, hips moving uncontrollably, small puffs of breath exploding against Sebastian's throat, and Sebastian's not better off himself, pleasure and lack of habit making his gestures awkward and jerky, but the warmth's enough, the intent and the pressure of his partner's body against him –  
    He breathes in Joseph's smell, feels the roughness of his gloves and the softness of his fingers, ecstasy’s coming through him by jerky pangs, a drunkenness much sweeter than the real one, the other man's voice getting higher and rougher –  
    Then orgasm's hitting him, a rush of pure white-hot pleasure. When he comes to, Joseph's breathless against him, eyes glazed, laying calmly against him. Nice to know that, at least, he's not so much a sucky partner as for – what has happened – as he is at a police level. He wipes his hand on the sofa; the dead owner shouldn't mind.  
    Sebastian should find something to say. He should tries to put words onto what happened.  
    He softly breathes into the silence, let Joseph nuzzles at his shoulder. They'll have time for words later. When they get out.  
    For now, fuck the Haunted, fuck the fear, fuck the hanging shadows of death and rottenness and the madness of a disfigured genius.  
    He breathes into the silence, and for just a moment it tastes like peace.


End file.
